CEU women take down Lady Badgers

The Lady Eagle's Livnat Alon drives through Snow defenders.

By TERRY WILLISsports reporter

It hasn't been the season the College of Eastern Utah Lady Eagles had hoped for. But for one weekend they played like they could take on the world. But while they didn't do that they did take on and take down third place Snow in two games over the weekend.

On Friday it was CEU 106 Snow 78. On Saturday it looked like Snow would bounce back for a split, but the Lady Eagles made a last big push for a come from behind 70- 63 victory to complete the sweep.

Shooting has been the Achilles heel of the Lady Eagles all season, but on Friday CEU shot 6-11 from the three point line and 63.9 percent from the floor in the first half. Kaylie Robison had 18 points and eight rebounds and Amber Strong scored nine. Veronica Siquerious and Savana Gines had eight points each.

In the second half CEU stayed on fire and shot 52.8 percent from the floor and 40.9 percent from beyond the three point line. The Lady Eagles full-court defense was too much for the Snow women to handle. Everyone on the CEU team had some valuable court time. Four players scored in double digits as the CEU team scored over a hundred points.

Coach Dave Paur was very happy with his win Friday and that left him pretty relaxed as the same two teams went at it on Saturday. CEU went into the game with little pressure while Snow felt their backs to the wall. For the first half of play it was the Badgers who controlled the tempo and the Eagles were trailing at the half.

Much of the same took place for the majority of the second period. With nine and a half minutes left in the game CEU found themselves down by 10 and not making any head way against the good zone defense by Snow. During a time out, Coach Paur encouraged his team while on offense to pick up the speed at which they attack the zone by making quicker passes. The plan was to not allow the zone defense to shift and force CEU into poor shots. The team listened. Suddenly it was a whole different ball game. The 10 point deficit disappeared and CEU ended up winning by seven.

For Coach Paur, it was the performance from his team he had hoped for all season and he was pleased with the way they finished this game for their second straight win in a row over Snow College.

"Our shooting has been a problem all season," he said. "But this weekend they came out firing. Today Snow's zone gave us problems and I just told the girl's to pick up the pace and move the ball around faster and they (Snow) couldn't adjust. The way we played this weekend we could beat anybody in the league. We take on Salt Lake next weekend and if we play like this, we'll beat them easily."

The Lady Eagles finish up their regular season with a pair of games against SLCC on Friday at 5:30 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. at the BDAC.

If they can take both games they will finish with a tie with Snow for third place in the SWAC.